Research Catalogue

This paper examines how generative AI transforms the indexical conditions of image-making and, with them, the ethical relation to Alterity that has long underpinned photographic practice. While conventional photography maintains a legible index—what Barthes called "that-has-been"—such indexicality has been lost in the case of AI images, where a single image is in fact produced from computationally dispersed archives in which any visible sign of origin becomes irretrievable. Crucially, the paper distinguishes between the disappearance of indexical presence and the persistence of the Derridean trace: though one can no longer perceive a clear index of an AI image, the trace of the Other nevertheless persists within the very generative process. The loss of a direct index to the Other thus enables an illusion of absolute ownership, where the image appears authored by the user's desire alone. Without the recalcitrant encounter with alterity in the image-making process, AI image generation risks becoming structurally auto-erotic. The paper therefore argues that recognition of Alterity is foundational to ethical image-making and thus essential to artistic research practice.

In contemporary society, digital devices increasingly dictate our behaviour, blurring the line between human agency and machine compliance while striving for smooth and seamless interactions. Sound signals plays a significant role in shaping our behaviour and how we experience these interactions. This research explores which aspects of our humanity may be diminished or transformed through these daily interactions with digital systems. At the same time, it asks how sound and interaction design might become tools to reimagine these systems - allowing for more embodied awareness rather than passive compliance.

This practice as research (PaR) investigates how somatic and dyadic methods can inform the act of filming within the field of screendance.Drawing on over six years of collaborative enquiry, the project introduces the moving camera witness—a method that integrates somatic awareness, witnessing practices from Authentic Movement, and the enquiry process of the ‘relating dyad’ into a filming practice. Working closely with somatic movers, this research repositions the camera as a somatic, relational, and perceptual tool that can work alongside and support a somatic movement practice, ultimately becoming a somatic filming practice in its own right. The research contributes new audiovisual works, scores, interviews, and theoretical insights to screendance, while extending existing concepts such as camera-witnessing (Goldhahn 2015, 2021), the somatic camera (Salzer, 2020) and applies Ingold’s idea of correspondence Ingold (2017, 2018, 2021) within the field of screendance. The result is a participatory and reflexive filmmaking method that highlights the co-emergent nature of moving, filming, and witnessing.

Abstract This study investigates the role of music and sound in shaping a sense of identity among second-generation immigrants in Finland, with a particular focus on Finnish Kosovar experiences. As Finland moves from a historically homogeneous society toward a more multicultural landscape, understanding how musical engagement influences identity formation becomes increasingly significant. Through autoethnographic reflection and artistic practice, this research explores how listening, performing, and creating music mediate the negotiation of cultural heritage, integration, and hybrid identities among individuals navigating multiple cultural worlds. Central to this exploration is the master concert Safe Ocean, which serves as both a personal and academic articulation of the study’s core themes. The concert integrates multilingual expression, traditional Albanian and Turkish musical materials, and hybrid compositional methods that also incorporate Nordic musical elements such as modal melodies, open-voiced harmonies, and timbral aesthetics characteristic of the region’s contemporary folk and art music practices. By combining solo, small-group, and full-ensemble arrangements, the project presents both intimate and collective expressions, engaging instruments and musical influences from Kosovar Albanian, Turkish, Nordic, and Middle Eastern traditions. Through the interweaving of autoethnographic insight, artistic creation, and scholarly inquiry, this study demonstrates how music evokes memory, supports emotional processing, and supports dialogue between multiple cultural worlds. Findings indicate that engagement with sound and musical practice contributes not only to personal identity formation but also to the creation of social belonging and spaces for intercultural dialogue. This research contributes to broader discussions on music, diaspora, and identity, offering insight into how artistic practices can mediate complex cultural experiences and support the integration of second-generation immigrants within multicultural societies.

Contemporary art criticism often advances by way of interpretive extraction. Works are translated into meanings, themes, intentions, and arguments, which then circulate with remarkable efficiency through institutional language. This practice, for all its fluency, carries an unexamined cost: the quiet displacement of the viewer, the compression of encounter into explanation, and the steady accumulation of linguistic force where restraint might have sufficed. _Measuring Proximity_ proposes a post-interpretive diagnostic tool situated within the framework of Post-Interpretive Criticism (PIC). It does not ask whether an interpretation is correct, persuasive, or useful. Instead, it attends to posture, how critical language positions itself in relation to the artwork, how closely it remains, how quickly it resolves, and how readily it aligns. The framework emerges from a refusal of rigid disciplinary boundaries. It proceeds from the conviction that once inquiry is pursued with sufficient depth, the familiar divisions between philosophy, criticism, rhetoric, ethics, and analysis begin to collapse, revealing a shared terrain of attention and care. In this sense, the diagnostic experiment does not belong to a single “subject,” nor does it attempt to formalize one. Five diagnostic indices, Rhetorical Density (RD), Interpretive Load Index (ILI), Viewer Displacement Ratio (VDR), Ethical Proximity Score (EPS), and Institutional Alignment Indicator (IAI), are introduced as reflective instruments for tracing the behavior of language rather than adjudicating its claims. The framework is intentionally non-prescriptive and exploratory, offered in the spirit of a serious experiment, one that treats measurement not as authority, but as curiosity. These measures do not seek to replace interpretation, nor to govern style or method. They operate as a mirror, rendering visible the pressures already at work within critical discourse. What emerges is not a system of judgment, but a way of noticing: a playful yet disciplined attempt to see where explanation begins to outweigh encounter, and where proximity quietly gives way to possession. Rhetorical density enters this framework by way of inheritance rather than invention. Its articulation as a formal, measurable feature of language was first developed by Mandar Marathe and introduced to the research community through presentations at venues such as QUALICO 2025 at Masaryk University and the Digital Humanities Conference at SOAS University of London. Later implementations, including the BALAGHA Score (2025–2026), extended its use toward the measurement of rhetorical richness in Arabic-language texts. Here, rhetorical density functions simply as a descriptive register of linguistic intensity. The remaining indices: Interpretive Load Index (ILI), Viewer Displacement Ratio (VDR), Ethical Proximity Score (EPS), and Institutional Alignment Indicator (IAI), all emerge from within Post-Interpretive Criticism itself and belong specifically to its diagnostic orientation. The framework is not intended to guide the production of criticism, nor does it imply an ideal direction or outcome; it functions only as a means of reflecting on critical language after it has already been written.

Name Painting is an activity that has the potential to bring people together to test their opinions and tastes in a phenomenological fashion. This research aim to reveal how such an activity can lead to results that can be expressed through poetry. The arts-based research aims to reflect some of the challenges of engaging with the public for participation in a cultural activity, that of Name Painting, but also aims to show some fruitful ways to display the results in the form of poetry. A.I. is also consulted to provide further contrast with the participant and artist-researcher's approaches to name painting. The thematic and content analysis of the study reveals some of the patterns associated with the results in a mixed methods approach.